by Femi Akomolafe
(Swans - October 19, 2009)
• What exactly is agitating you guys? Why are you so worked up over the president? The man has spent just nine months in power and he inherited a very big mess and to those of us outside, he's doing a terrific job trying to fix the problems. Why are you guys so against him?
• That's the problem with all you lily-livered Bolshevik bastards out there. This is the U S of A. This is America and we do things properly here.
• Like calling for the head of your head of state?
• Like whatever. Our hallowed Constitution, the best in the world, guaranteed us the right to speak our minds on any subject under the sun and beyond. I guess it is the kind of luxury you Leninist bloc-heads out there are not used to.
• We are not exactly Leninists in this part of the world. The high technicalities of Mr. Lenin's and Mr. Marx's propositions are way, way too sophisticated for our peasant minds. We just cannot understand why you people are so furious because your president wants to extend health insurance coverage to the less priviledge in your country. Didn't the Christian Holy Book say that you should help the weak if you're strong? Why should extending help to impecunious citizens be considered high treason?
• Because you don't live here, mister. This is the U S of A! Americans do not want government in their lives and certainly not inside their houses. Goddamn it! This is a very simple thing to understand except to hardcore Marxists and Islamo-fascists. The business of health coverage is for each individual to decide. Don't forget this is the greatest country in the world, and our way of life is second to none. That's why we are the envy of the world.
• I wonder how you came to that conclusion. I won't agree that the rest of the world finds your particular system that attractive. Let's leave that aside, though. The rest of us out here who believed your president's election slogan of "Change we can believe in" now think that he has sold out to the corporate interests that rule America; but here you are telling us that he is a cross between Malcolm X and Karl Marx. How do you square that?
• We do not need to square off anything, mister. We Americans are rugged individuals. Our hallmark is our individualistic spirit to venture and build our own prosperity according to our native abilities. We take exception to an all-knowing president telling us how to organise mundane things like organising insurance and stuff. We are no fools and we are no simpletons. That's what we are trying to tell the world and the usurper at our White House.
• What about those who cannot get insurance for themselves simply because they cannot afford it? Should they be allowed to die?
• Everyone born into this world shall surely die. You are bound to die whether or not you have health insurance coverage. What I strongly object to is for a president to think that he has the right to use my tax dollars to give insurance to some undocumented aliens.
• Aliens as in extraterrestrial?
• No, aliens as in non-citizens. Why should I pay to give insurance to some Mexican who lives here illegally?
• But the president says that his plan will not cover illegal immigrants.
• Since when do you believe what politicians tell you?
• So you have no faith in your government?
• I have faith in my government as long as no one gives oneself the right to spend my tax dollars without my consent.
• But what we outside the USA simply cannot fathom is that your government spent trillions of dollars to bail out insolvent banks without your consent and without much protestation from you. The money was given to rich corporations and individuals who simply went ahead and awarded themselves fantastic bonuses. How come you find it so irksome that the spending of a few billion dollars to give insurance coverage to your poor citizens constitutes an affront to your constitutional rights?
• America is built on rugged individualism. When presidents take it upon themselves to start intruding into citizens' lives in major ways like providing free comprehensive medical care for one and all, we are asking for big-time problems. When and where would it end? What if Obama had a brain wave and woke up to announce that the government would start to give people free food? This is America for God sake, not some backwoods Bolshevik republic!
• What Mr. Obama is asking for is neither comprehensive nor revolutionary; just a little reformation on the current system that consumes so much money and produces so little. It's only the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that benefit from the current system whereby the USA spends more money than any other nation but has the worst health delivery system anywhere in the industrialized world.
• Mr. Obama, ah! Mister, I don't want the president of my republic referred to in those clearly un-American names. What exactly is the republic coming to?
• But Barack Hussein Obama is his name!
• Why do you think that we are agitating to take our country back?
• From whom?
• From all those wretched, Karl Marx-quoting Bolshevik revolutionaries with their Islamic supporters and their Taliban suicide bombers. We cannot sit back and allow our republic to be hijacked by Islamo-fascists and bleeding-heart revolutionaries.
• Mr. Obama is clearly not revolutionary and he is certainly not a Moslem, as he has said on several occasions.
• Since when do you start believing politicians like him? Look, no leader of our country can carry an Islamo-fascist tag and except respect from us.
• But he won the votes fair and square with many decent white folks among his foot soldiers.
• We patriots went to sleep believing in the fairness of the system. Before we realized it, the Islamo-fascists have taken over the machinery of our government. This is fight-back time, big time! It all started with their taking the war directly to our Homeland on 9/11, and creepily they have invaded the highest echelon of our government with one of them sitting in our White House, to carry out their Marxist-Leninist socialist and Islamo-fascist agendas.
• Your White House?
• We want one of our own to sit in the White House and manage our affairs. We do not want any of them godless, ignoramus Islamo-fascists directing the affairs of the nation of God's own country.
• To those of us out here, your country has got the most urbane, educated, and articulate president to come out of your system in a very long time. We think of your president as rather intelligent. No one can seriously accuse him of being an ignoramus. He is an America citizen for Christ sake and he is a practicing Christian.
• Since when? We never had a president without a solid Judeo-Christian background and we never had one with an unpronounceable Islamo-fascist name.
• Van Buren, Breckinridge, and Eisenhower are hardly easier on the mouth than Obama. Has the man's race got anything to do with the current rage against him?
• You gotta be kidding, we don't lump solid Anglo-Saxon names with some Marxist-Leninist, Islamo-fascist unpronounceable name of a former slave who is bent on destroying not only our economy but our way of life as we know it.
• Oh, I thought it was Mr. Bush that sent your economy south. Why didn't you guys call for his head? We did not see you fellas rising up to demand his neck when he and his corporate friends brazenly stole the commonwealth. We didn't see you protesting when he launched his totally insane and budget-bursting wars. Why are you guys not organizing to go and lynch him?
• You gotta be kidding. President Bush remains a solid, genuine, and an accomplished American hero. Bush is a war hero who heroically defended the Homeland against Marxist bloc-heads and their Taliban supporters. He took the fight directly to the enemy. Now we have some bleeding-heart Liberal who is talking about sharing American power with some upstart Chinkos and some godless Russians.
• Chinkos?
• What you call them Chinese? Goddamn it!
• Are you in effect saying that it is wiser to spend billions of dollars waging useless wars and killing innocent Iraqis, Somalis, Pakistanis, and Afghans than to use the money to provide some health insurance coverage for Americans?
• Your logic is totally un-American and absolutely illogical. What is the use in being healthy and having a health insurance policy when Islamo-fascist terrorists can come and suicide-bomb you? What sense do we have in living an unsecured life; living under constant threat from terrorists and suicide bombers? What stupid fools you take us for when we have to depend on stupid Chinkos and some garbage at the United Nations to defend our Homeland?
• Your country was bombed only once and it went paranoid. What about the rest of us who are forced to live under constant American threat to our lives?
• Whad'ya mean? We ain't no terrorists and we wage only honest-to-god wars.
• So are you saying in all honesty that the man's race has got nothing to do with your protest against his rule?
• What's wrong in bringing our country back to God and to prosperity? What is wrong in demanding that we be governed by our own kind?
• Are you suggesting that the elected president of the USA is not "one of our kind"?
• Obviously he isn't, or are you blind?
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